


A Candle, When The Darkness Falls

by PhoenixFalls



Series: Just As They Wished It To Be [8]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bot Feels, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hugs, Male/Female Friendship, POV Female Character, Pepper Feels, Rhodey Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 13:01:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhoenixFalls/pseuds/PhoenixFalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the eve of Rhodey's last trip into Afghanistan searching for Tony, Tony's family takes comfort in each other down in Tony's workshop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Candle, When The Darkness Falls

There was a red pick-up truck in the driveway.

It wasn’t Manny’s — Manny always parked down below, on the other side of the tennis courts. Besides, Manny’s truck was several years older, and didn’t have a backseat. Pepper checked her phone, but there were no alerts from J.A.R.V.I.S. about an intruder, so either the A.I. had been compromised or the truck belonged to Colonel Rhodes.

J.A.R.V.I.S. greeted Pepper when she stepped through the front door, so Pepper concluded that James must be somewhere in the house. She closed her eyes and wished, for a moment, that it had been an intruder instead.

An intruder would have given her someone to fight, someone she could unleash the full might of Stark Industries on. James, however, was not a suitable target, which meant that all his presence did was prevent her from doing what she came to the Malibu house to do — curl up somewhere in Tony’s workshop and cry.

Eighty-seven days since Obie had let her know Tony’s convoy had been attacked. Eighty-seven days of placating shareholders and pressuring the military and the diplomatic corps and keeping up a confident facade, because Pepper was one of S.I.’s public faces, all while holding silent vigil for the man-child that had somehow become Pepper’s favorite person in the world. Surely the universe owed her an afternoon off.

She found herself clicking her heels viciously against the hardwood floors as she swept from room to room, looking for James so she could deal with whatever he had brought and then get him out.

After scouring the ground floor without finding him, Pepper headed downstairs. She input her code to access the workshop, though it was as dark and still as it had been since the morning she had kicked Christine Everhart to the curb. As soon as the door slid open she heard the murmur of voices.

“I’ll get him back, J. I know the odds as well as you do, after this long, but sometimes you just have to have faith.”

“Master Stark programmed me to obey rationality above all, Colonel Rhodes. To accept the evidence of my sensors and the dictates of logic. Since Master Stark was taken I have been monitoring every intelligence network I have been able to hack, and I have analyzed the data from every satellite that has passed over Afghanistan, and there has been nothing out of the ordinary. Additionally, there have been no ransom demands made of Stark Industries. I am afraid there is little basis for your hope at this point.”

“Numbers can’t tell you everything. And besides, after all these years, I’d think the evidence of your sensors should tell you that if anybody can beat the odds, can rise from the ashes, it’s Tony. Remember when Ty did his whole corporate espionage trick and both stole the SI drone plans for Hammer and came after Tony in the civil courts for defamation? That was a terrible eight months, but Tony came out of it looking like a hero. Eventually. And I swear to you, the shady world of corporate law is way more dangerous than fucking Afghanistan.”

Pepper stayed still in the doorway, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the low light. Finally, she caught a small movement by the far wall, where the bot-charging stations were. It took a moment for her brain to make sense of the dark outline James made.

He was in his fatigues, but his spine and shoulders were military-straight even through the baggy fabric. He was turned three-quarters away from where Pepper was standing, facing the dark windows, and all three of the bots were out of their stations and gathered around him. There was too little light for Pepper to tell which bot was which, but one had its hand splayed just below James’s shoulder blades; one had its hand wrapped around James’s hip; and one (probably Butterfingers, Butterfingers was always James’s favorite for some reason) had its hand at James’s chest, where James was slowly stroking it with his own.

James’s voice continued to wind its way through the workshop, carefully even, relating some story from Tony’s MIT days involving an engineering professor that had had it in for the Stark heir because he had been fired by SI, and now that Pepper could see the bots she knew James was keeping up his monologue because it was the only way could comfort JARVIS too.

She closed her eyes against the sudden tears that welled up — she was far too prone to crying these past three months, she had had to start keeping mascara and tissue in her purse instead of just her desk — then she slipped off her shoes and padded over to the mournful tableau.

When she was about five feet from the bot at James’s back, JARVIS cut through James’s anecdote to greet her with a subdued “Good evening Ms. Potts.” James stilled, then turned to face Pepper, his movements controlled in the way Pepper associated with bomb techs and hunting dogs.

Pepper thought that she probably ought to feel guilty — she was intruding on his grief the way she had proactively resented him for being in the house to intrude on hers — but all these years working with Tony had taught her to ignore socially-mandated ‘ought’s and act decisively, so she simply finished her walk into James’s personal space and wrapped her arms around him.

They fit together awkwardly, James still ramrod straight with his arms tense at his sides, Pepper just too tall to tuck her face into the crook of his neck as she wanted, and the bots far closer than Pepper was usually comfortable with. But she took a couple deep breaths and kept holding on to James anyway, because she knew they were all the family Tony had, and family should be able to take comfort in each other in times like this.

The bot that James had been stroking — it was indeed Butterfingers — extended its hand to rest right in the middle of Pepper’s back, and that broke James’s paralysis. He wrapped his arms around Pepper’s waist, twining one hand through Butterfingers’s claw.

After another second, You’s claw came up to rest next to Butterfingers’s, and James took it in his other hand. Any other time Pepper would probably have been a little freaked out at the press of cool metal through her silk blouse, but now she just closed her eyes and held James tighter.

She didn’t startle when a third claw made contact with her skin. She just twined her own fingers with Dummy’s at the back of James’s neck.

A sigh that was closer to a sob than James would probably ever admit broke the silence, then James picked up his story from the point JARVIS’s greeting to Pepper had interrupted it. His voice was exactly as even as before, but from this vantage point Pepper could feel the cost of that steadiness in the tears that fell in her hair.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from Sean Stewart's _Nobody's Son._


End file.
